Let Them Come to You: On Building a Poetic Home

I used to think I had to chase it.

Visibility. Reach. Numbers. The feeling that if I just pushed a little harder, spoke a little louder, something would finally click into place.

But poetry doesn’t work like that. And neither does a press.

This week, one person chose to support the work. Around the same time, an institution chose not to. And it reminded me — again — that what we’re building here doesn’t live or die by scale. It grows through recognition. Quiet, deliberate recognition.

If you’re a poet, you already know this on some level.

You don’t write because it’s efficient. You don’t write because it guarantees an audience. You write because something in you insists on being said — and because, somewhere, someone might recognise themselves in it.

That’s the connection I care about.

Not reaching everyone. Not chasing attention for its own sake. But creating a space where the right work can land, and where the right people can find it — slowly, intentionally, without being rushed into visibility before it’s ready.

Letting people come to you isn’t passive. It’s precise.

It means you build something with enough integrity that when someone arrives, they know they’re in the right place. It means you trust the work enough not to dilute it just to be seen. It means you’re willing to take the longer path — the one where connection actually holds.

Sunday Mornings at the River is built that way.

Not as a platform that tries to be everything, but as a space that knows what it stands for. Work that confronts, that feels, that doesn’t turn away. Work that might not always be easy to place, but is necessary to read.

If that sounds like the kind of work you’re making, you’re already part of it.

You don’t have to force your way in. You don’t have to perform for attention. Just keep building your voice, your language, your way of seeing.

The right places will recognise it.

And when they do, it won’t feel like arrival.

It will feel like recognition.

If you want, I can make a slightly sharper version with more bite (more Westenberg edge), or a shorter version for Upscrolled.